Shrink expensive, sought-after, vintage drum machines down to iPhone size.
Anyone who’s shaken their booty more than a few times to techno, hip-hop or R&B in the past 25 years owes a little something to the classic Roland TR-909 and TR-808 drum machines. And whether you’re a skilled beatmaker or a total noob, Roventskjj’s homage to those beat boxes, IR-909, lets you make sweet-sounding, butt-jiggling rhythms in the palm of your hand.
With six sound sets, including samples of four Roland drum machines—the TR-909, -808, -707 and -606—IR-909 comes with four pre-programmed patterns per soundset. You can reprogram those beats using a standard 16-step grid (one measure of a four-on-the-floor beat), which repeats as you play it. Each sound set has eight individual percussion sounds, including kick drums, snares, claps, and cymbals. For each individual sound, you can adjust volume, pitch, length, and more. For those values, as well as a beat’s tempo and shuffle (a.k.a. swing), you adjust the amounts up and down by tilting your device up or down.
IR-909’s sounds and programming capabilities are good enough to make beats for real songs, so the only shame is that you can’t export digital audio files; the headset jack is your only way out.
Roventskjj IR-909
COMPANY: Roventskjj
CONTACT: http://roventskij.net
PRICE: $4.99
REQUIREMENTS: iPhone or iPod touch with 2.0 Software Update
Six accurate, high-quality sound sets of eight sounds each. Programming that’s faithful to the original TR-909, including shuffle, note accents and sound editing.
No pattern-export capabilities. Can't export music files. Lack of documentation can make program difficult for anyone not familiar with drum-machine programming.
